How Accurate Was SAP on Design Thinking Speeding Implementations?

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Executive Summary

For years SAP has said that Design Thinking sped implementation times.
In this article, we review the accuracy of this claim.

Video Introduction: What SAP Said About Design Thinking Speeding Implementations

Text Introduction (Skip if You Watched the Video)

Design Thinking is a creative concept that SAP has adopted or tried to adopt and how uses so liberally that they have diluted much of its meaning. Design Thinking is yet another concept that SAP has introduced that SAP states will speed implementations. This includes the ASAP Methodology, Preconfigured Solutions, and RDSs. SAP is constantly proposing that some new item reduces the implementation duration to implement software. One might wonder, if each of these methods or tools work, why are new methods continually introduced by SAP? You will learn how accurate SAP was on its claims of design thinking speeding implementations.

Our References for This Article

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Lack of Financial Bias Notice: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.

This is published by a research entity.
Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department.

The Truth About Design Thinking

SAP applications take the longest to implement any of the applications we track. This is illustrated in our Project Planning Calculators. There are some reasons for this.

SAP makes very complex software.
SAP uses outside consulting companies to perform the vast majority of implementations, and external consulting companies want projects to go on as long as possible.
SAP releases less mature applications than do most competitors.
SAP requires extensive customizations on most accounts to make up for the expectation that SAP would provide more functionality coverage than it does.

None of these things are addressed by Design Thinking. Instead, Design Thinking, as with the implementation of shortening initiatives that preceded it, is designed to get customers to think they can implement SAP applications faster than they can.

Conclusion and Calculation

SAP receives a 0% accuracy rating on Design Thinking and speeding SAP implementations.

Link to the Parent Article

This is one of many research articles on a specific topic that supports a larger research calculation. For the overview of the research calculation for all of the SAP topics that were part of the study, see the following primary research A Study into SAP’s Accuracy.